A granite statue located in Tombos, an ancient Egyptian outpost in present-day Sudan Sue Fleckney via Wikimedia Commons under CC BY-SA 2.0Historians have long assumed that ancient Egyptian pyramids were constructed primarily for royals and high-status individualsthose with the money and power required to build such grand structures.But new research at the archaeological site ofTombos in present-day Sudan is complicating that narrative. According to a recent study published in theJournal of Anthropological Archaeology, Tombos pyramids may have served as the final resting place for low-status workers alongside elites.We can no longer assume that individuals buried in grandiose [pyramid] tombs are the elite, write the researchers. Indeed, the hardest working members of the communities are associated with the most visible monuments.Situated along the Nile River, Tombos lies in the ancient region ofNubia. In around 1400 B.C.E., Egypt conquered the area and established Tombos to facilitate colonial control, according to the study. Workers built pyramids in the area, though they were modest in comparison to famous examples like the pyramids ofGiza.Researchers recently reanalyzed 110 human skeletons from Tombos that had originally been studied in 2012. They examined the skeletonsenthesesthe places where tendons and ligaments connect to boneswhich can hint at how much physical labor an individual has performed. A map and details of two tombs in Tombos' northern cemetery Stuart Tyson Smith / Journal of Anthropological ArchaeologyWhen someone performs intensive labor, their tendons and ligaments require a stronger mode of attachment, per the study. Their bones may develop distinct crests and ridges at the point of attachment.Entheseal changes cant tell us exactly what these people were doing, but they can tell us if they were more physically active or more like couch potatoes, lead authorSarah Schrader, an archaeologist at Leiden University in the Netherlands, tellsBBC Science Focus Hatty Willmoth.Some of the bones exhibited little entheseal change, indicating that they had belonged to the members of the upper classes. But the team found more extensive entheseal changes on others, suggesting that they once belonged to lower-class workers.This could potentially shake up what we know about the pyramids, Schrader tells BBC Science Focus. In the past, weve just assumed that the people who were buried in there were the elite, because we know that the pyramids were designed for elite people. That still holds true, but maybe there were others being buried in the pyramids as well.From past excavations, researchers know the names and roles of many individuals buried in Tombos. Roland Enmarch, an Egyptologist at theUniversity of Liverpool who wasnt involved in the study, says that many Egyptian pyramids from this period were built for high-status individuals who werent royalty. A map of the Tombos cemetery Journal of Anthropological ArchaeologyWere very much looking at the later half of Egyptian history, when more impressive non-royal tombs would often have a pyramid as part of the mud-brick superstructure of the tomb, he tells BBC Science Focus.Who, then, are the lower-class individuals buried with them? Researchers think they may have worked for the elites as servants. As Schrader tellsLive Sciences Owen Jarus, there are several possible explanations for why people in these groups were buried together.One theory is that Tombos elites wished to enforce class structures even in death. To this end, they may have imposed a hierarchical social order on the sacred landscape of the cemetery, per the study.Our thinking is that elites surrounded themselves with the non-elites who worked in some capacity for them, effectively replicating the social order with burials in and around their funerary monuments, co-authorStuart Tyson Smith, an anthropologist at the University of California at Santa Barbara, tells Live Science.Smith adds that lower-class individuals may have favored these burial practices, too, hoping to benefit from associations with their employers in terms of status, magical protections and the funerary cult.Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.Filed Under: Africa, African History, Ancient Civilizations, Ancient Egypt, Archaeology, Bones, Death, Egypt, History, New Research, Rituals and Traditions, Sudan, Wealth